Lady Windermere's Fan: Act I

Well, you kept paying me elaborate compliments the whole evening.

We all have our little vanities, Lady Windermere.

Oh, nowadays so many conceited people go about Society pretending to be good, that I think it shows rather a sweet and modest disposition to pretend to be bad.

Oh, nowadays so many conceited people go about Society pretending to be good, that I think it shows rather a sweet and modest disposition to pretend to be bad.

If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn’t. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism.

Nowadays people seem to look on life as a speculation. It is not a speculation. It is a sacrament. Its ideal is Love. Its purification is sacrifice.

Nowadays people seem to look on life as a speculation. It is not a speculation. It is a sacrament. Its ideal is Love. Its purification is sacrifice.

Do you think then—of course I am only putting an imaginary instance—do you think that in the case of a young married couple, say about two years married, if the husband suddenly becomes the intimate friend of a woman of—well, more than doubtful character—is always calling upon her, lunching with her, and probably paying her bills—do you think that the wife should not console herself?

Because the husband is vile—should the wife be vile also?

It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.

Most women, for instance, nowadays, are rather mercenary.

You have the modern affectation of weakness.

It’s a curious thing, Duchess, about the game of marriage—a game, by the way, that is going out of fashion—the wives hold all the honours, and invariably lose the odd trick.

Dear Lord Darlington, how thoroughly depraved you are!

Why do you talk so trivially about life, then?

Do, as a concession to my poor wits, Lord Darlington, just explain to me what you really mean.

Nowadays to be intelligible is to be found out.

It is quite scandalous, for she is absolutely inadmissible into society.

Sweet girl! So devoted to sunsets! Shows such refinement of feeling, does it not? After all, there is nothing like Nature, is there?

My dear nieces—you know the Saville girls, don’t you?—such nice domestic creatures—plain, dreadfully plain, but so good—well, they’re always at the window doing fancy work, and making ugly things for the poor, which I think so useful of them in these dreadful socialistic days, and this terrible woman has taken a house in Curzon Street, right opposite them—such a respectable street, too!

Not that many ladies call on her, dear, but she has a great many disreputable men friends—my own brother particularly, as I told you—and that is what makes it so dreadful about Windermere.

I assure you, my dear, that on several occasions after I was first married, I had to pretend to be very ill, and was obliged to drink the most unpleasant mineral waters, merely to get Berwick out of town.

He was so extremely susceptible. Though I am bound to say he never gave away any large sums of money to anybody.

My boy is excessively immoral.

It was only Berwick’s brutal and incessant threats that made me accept him at all, and before the year was out, he was running after all kinds of petticoats, every colour, every shape, every material.

And mind you don’t take this little aberration of Windermere’s too much to heart. Just take him abroad, and he’ll come back to you all right.

His father made a great fortune by selling some kind of food in circular tins—most palatable, I believe—I fancy it is the thing the servants always refuse to eat.

Some one who pitied me was kind enough to tell me what every one in London knows already—your daily visits to Curzon Street, your mad infatuation, the monstrous sums of money you squander on this infamous woman!

Oh, don’t imagine I mind about the money. As far as I am concerned, you may squander everything we have.

How impertinent of her!

But don’t make chasm after chasm between us. God knows the last few minutes have thrust us wide enough apart.

Nothing in the whole world would induce me.

We have been too lax. We must make an example. I propose to begin to-night.

Yes, you gave me this fan to-day; it was your birthday present. If that woman crosses my threshold, I shall strike her across the face with it.

And, Parker, be sure you pronounce the names of the guests very distinctly to-night. Sometimes you speak so fast that I miss them. I am particularly anxious to hear the names quite clearly, so as to make no mistake.